MA student Salma Abumeeiz awarded prestigious internship at the Smithsonian Institute
By the end of Salma’s fourth year at the University of Windsor, she had not only completed a BA in history but also finished her required coursework for an MA. But this spring she was living on Capitol Hill and dashing between offices all along Washington DC’s famous mall. “It was an interesting time to be in the US capital,” she reports. Her first weekend she joined in with the March for Science.
The Smithsonian Institute was founded in 1846 as the United States National Museum. Today it is composed of museums and research centers. Salma worked with librarians at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Research Annex to make sure the libraries were meeting the needs of researchers and curators. This meant most days were spent visiting both famous and less well-known parts of the Smithsonian.
Salma is now back in Windsor to complete and defend her major paper. She has collected oral histories of daughters of Arab immigrants to Windsor and Essex counties. She particularly enjoyed the intersections between her own research and her work at the Smithsonian. She appreciated the ways that exhibits and work supported by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage celebrated the importance of everyday cultural experiences. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center strives to not to speak for Asian Pacific Americans but to provide platforms for them to explore and curate their own culture. For similar reasons Salma turned to oral history for her research.
Her historical research skills were put to work when she was asked to work on the Adopt a Book program which was featured on the blog of the Smithsonian Libraries.
On track to complete her MA this summer, Salma will soon be representing the University of Windsor even further afield. She will begin working on a second MA in Library and Information Studies at the University of British Colombia.